Democrats Mention Donald Trump 23 Times in Their Benghazi Report

Jun 28, 2016

RUSH: I just want to spend a couple more minutes here on this Benghazi report today, because once we finish, the narrative elsewhere is going to be entirely different. Outside of this program — and I’m sure other conservative media — the narrative on this today is gonna be that they found no new evidence of any wrongdoing by Mrs. Clinton, so there’s nothing to see here. And they’re gonna move on. Now, they won’t be able to say that the Republicans targeted Mrs. Clinton.

They won’t be able to allege the Republicans did this for purely partisan reasons, which is what the Republicans want. That’s what they want out of this. So frustrating. But the point is, after we spend time on it here, that’s gonna be it. Aside from elsewhere in the blogs, Fox News and so forth will be talking about it. But as far as the Drive-Bys are concerned, it’s pretty much dead now. Since they didn’t find any new wrongdoing by Mrs. Clinton, there’s no story here. Benghazi’s old news! “Yeah, four Americans dead? That’s too bad. So sad. You live and learn.

“Still, it was a great foreign policy achievement by Mrs. Clinton doing what she did in Libya.” And that’s the spin. I want to read to you here from a story about the Democrat version of the Benghazi report. They’ve tried to preempt this today, and they had no idea what the Republicans were gonna do. So they preempted. They had their own Benghazi report. By the way, the Democrats did not even participate in the official House committee investigation of Benghazi. The Democrats didn’t even show up.

They have released their own report, and here’s all you need to know about it: “A 339-page report released by Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi mentions Donald Trump 23 times.” Donald Trump wasn’t even on the public scene when Benghazi happened. He might have been on TV commenting about it as an infrequent guest, but what did Trump have to do with Benghazi? Nothing. But that’s not the point. The reason the Democrats mentioned Trump 23 times in their report is to provide the media a highway.

“Okay, media! Here’s what we want you to do. This is how we want you to cast and to characterize the Benghazi report,” and they put Trump’s name in there 23 times. “That total,” Trump being mentioned in the Democrat Benghazi report, “is more than the combined number of references to Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, two of the former Navy SEALs killed in” Benghazi. Their names, when you add the number of mentions, do not come anywhere near to equaling the number of times the Democrats mention Trump in their report on Benghazi.

“Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was also killed during the onslaught, is mentioned 85 times in the report, according to Republicans on the Select Committee. Sean Smith, a State Department information specialist who also died in Benghazi, is named 36 times in the report. … Democrats, led by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, have accused Republicans of using its investigation to target Clinton politically.” Remember, now, the Democrats’ report is issued yesterday, and in it they accuse Gowdy and the other committee members of doing nothing other than targeting Clinton politically.

That their investigation was totally political, had nothing to do with the substance of what happened, nothing to do with finding out why four dead Americans are dead. It was all about attacking Hillary. So what do the Republicans do? Come out today and say, “Oh, no, no, no, no! You won’t even find Hillary in the report! No, no, no! No, no, no, no, no. We don’t… We don’t even try to find the ‘why.’ No, no, we do the ‘who, what, when.’ We don’t even try to find the ‘why. ‘ You won’t find Mrs. Clinton in this report!

“You don’t see us wearing T-shirts saying that Hillary lied people whatever! We don’t do that; we didn’t do that.” So Democrats level the allegation, Republicans the next day say, “Nope, nope, not us,” and the pathway is cleared for the media to say: No new evidence here against Mrs. Clinton. No wrongdoing whatsoever! The Democrat “report asserts that Clinton was ‘active and engaged’ during and after the Benghazi attacks. They also say that the investigation has been a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“‘Decades in the future, historians will look back on this investigation as a case study in how not to conduct a credible investigation…'” This is the Democrat Benghazi report. Historians “will showcase the proliferation of Republican abuses as a chief example of what happens when politicians are allowed to use unlimited taxpayer dollars…” This is more than chutzpah — and they can do it, ’cause they know they’re not gonna get called on it by anybody.

So it’s “what happens when politicians are allowed to use unlimited taxpayer dollars — and the formidable power of Congress — to attack their political foes.” Who actually does that? Can you think of like the IRS going after the Tea Party? (chuckles) Look, folks, I’m laughing. I’m in all candor, I’m infuriated by all this, and I always have been. I’m outraged. But I don’t know what good expressing countless outrage does about it.

I’m angered beyond my ability to tell you how much. I’m as frustrated as you are about this. I’m asking myself over and over, “How do they keep getting away with it?” Because they are exposed. The Democrats have been exposed over and over and over again. It’s not as… Now, the Drive-Bys don’t do it, but there’s plenty of other media that do, or does. Anyway, not only does the Democrats’ report mention Trump 23 times, but all that Cummings and the rest of the Democrats on the committee did was waste time and attack their political opponents.

That’s all their report is, is a bunch of wasted time and endless attacks on Republicans, not to mention how Hillary and the Obama administration acted entirely based on trying to protect Obama’s campaign. They accused the Republicans of engaging in a politically motivated attack when in fact everything the Regime did about this was put Obama’s political future ahead of the lives of four Americans who thought help was on the way, when it wasn’t anywhere near.

All of this was 56 days before the 2012 election. Also, the Democrats did not interview any witnesses. There are 20 references to David Brock and his super PAC, Correct the Record. There are 23 mentions of Donald Trump in the Democrats’ Benghazi report. And, remember, the purpose for that is to allow the media to say, “Hey, the Democrats have got Trump’s name in this 23 times! Trump might have some culpability here.” So they can do all kinds of allegations, questions, narratives.

What was Trump’s role in Benghazi?

It wouldn’t be that. It would be, “So what’s Trump really trying to do? Does he really care? He probably doesn’t care! He’s just taking a political opportunity himself.” But one thing the Democrats did wrong, they mistakenly… This the LA Times: “House Democrats Mistakenly Release Transcript Confirming Big Payout to Clinton Friend Sidney Blumenthal — [T]he report, which the Democrats published as a preemptive strike before the Republican[s released their findings today] revealed, apparently unintentionally, details about the eye-popping amount of money a close Clinton friend and advisor made in a contract with a pro-Clinton nonprofit.

“Democrats released but redacted a transcript of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal answering the committee’s questions to make the point that Republicans do not want the public to know what went on during the his interrogation… But the redaction marks are easily erased by anyone able to use a computer’s cut-and-paste function. Once the marks are lifted, the transcript portion reveals some unflattering things for any partisans on the committee, Republican or Democrat. It shows that Republicans did, indeed, leverage their subpoena of Blumenthal for political gain, digging into his financial contracts with David Brock…”

What do you mean? (chuckling) We’re trying to expose…

So even a transcript revealing that Hillary engineers a $200,000 payoff for her buddy in the investigation, somehow ends up as an indictment of the Republicans for even going there. “And for Democrats, the exchange exposes once again the absurd amounts of money people in the orbit of the Clintons sometimes seem to rake in just for, well, being in the orbit of the Clintons. ‘I’d say it’s about $200,000 a year,’ Blumenthal said when asked by a committee member how much the part-time work offering up advice and ideas was worth.'” So Blumenthal admitted that Hillary’s paying him…

Remember, Obama refused to allow him to be hired.

That’s the point of this one. She wanted to hire Blumenthal, put him on the State Department payroll. He’s such a bad actor. The reason he’s a bad actor, he’s a full-fledged partisan, but he gets caught all the time. So he’d be bad image-wise. It’s not that the work he does is unacceptable. It’s that he would get caught. So Obama wanted him nowhere near. Hillary hired him anyway, and it came out she was paying him a couple hundred grand for advice, and he was not anywhere in the official State Department. His advice should not have been taken.

He’s giving official advice to the secretary of state after having been told, Hillary having been told she couldn’t hire him. That’s what was revealed. And somehow, in the LA Times report, the Republicans are exposed as a bunch of partisan political hacks for uncovering that bit of information. No, Candy Crowley’s name was not mentioned in the report, but it should have been the way she covered for Obama in the Mitt Romney debate.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I just got a note, I checked the email during the break. Somebody says, “Rush, why do you think the Democrats mentioned Trump 23 times in their Benghazi report? Could it be that they are still literally scared to death, despite the conventional wisdom being that it’s now over, that Trump’s backtracking on everything and Trump stopped being who he is and Trump’s no longer jazzing people up. Even Republicans are saying that they’re not excited by Trump. It seems like all the pizzazz is gone from the Trump campaign. Now he’s revising his statements on Muslims getting into the country. Could it be that despite the appearance it looks like it’s all over, the Democrats are still scared to death of Trump and that’s why he’s in there 23 times?”

Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t think the Democrats ever rely on it being over. I think they are about pummeling political opponents every day no matter their standing. The Democrats are gonna try to destroy Donald Trump no matter if he’s sitting there with 2% in the polls, and they’re gonna try to destroy anybody else who gets in their way who they think has any kind of credibility at all. And since Trump’s the nominee, they’re not gonna stop hitting Trump no matter what they think.

I do think they think it’s over. I do think that the Democrats are just like the Republicans. I think they believe that Trump is eventually gonna just implode or explode or quit or never amount to anything. He’s not a serious threat. Nobody can compete with the establishment. Don’t forget the Brexit vote over in Great Britain. I mean, the people that voted and wanted to stay in the European Union had no idea what was about to happen. Their polls didn’t tell ’em the truth, and even if their polls had told ’em the truth, they wouldn’t have believed it.

They were totally shell-shocked when the actual vote came in, and what’s happened in the aftermath is comical. Blaming old people who don’t know anything. Needing to reschedule the vote. Changing the terms, meaning we gotta vote again, and this time the winning side has to get a 20% margin for it to count. They’re just beside themselves. Now you’ve got the mayor, the mayor of London, the new Muslim mayor of London is now asking for more concentrated power for himself in London.

People said, “Wait a minute, what are you trying to accomplish?”

(paraphrasing) “No, I’m not trying to set London up as its own nation,” he said. “I’m not gonna put border points on the M4,” which is the equivalent their Beltway. “I’m not gonna do that.”

“Wait a minute, nobody said you were. Why are you denying a charge that hasn’t been leveled?” But in the aftermath — this is how they all do it — in the aftermath of a shocking loss, they want more power to make sure some bastardization of events like this doesn’t happen again. So if the Democrats think that Trump is never gonna amount to hill of beans, they’re not gonna stop assailing him. They’re not gonna take any chances.